It's not the latest version of Android, but at least it's an update.

Share this story

Google recently updated its Android market share charts, and Nougat (both 7.0 and 7.1) is sitting pretty at 0.7 percent of the total active Android installed base. Considering Nougat launched on August 22, 2016, a less-than-one-percent update rate is pretty pathetic. We should see that number jump up a bit soon because after almost five months, Samsung is finally ready to join the ranks of Nougat-equipped devices. Today Nougat starts shipping out to the legions of Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge owners.

The update, which was first spotted by SamMobile, seems to be arriving first on unlocked European models of the device. Samsung doesn't sell an unlocked Galaxy S7 in the US—the phones are sold exclusively through carriers—so US customers have to wait for their carriers to get their acts together.

Nougat brings a ton of new features to Android, like a split-screen mode, a revamped notification panel, user-adjustable UI scale, better power saving, new emojis, and many other changes. Samsung is, of course, going to apply its Touchwiz skin to the OS, so not every feature is guaranteed to make it.

With the unlocked model getting the update, we should see US carriers slowly start to announce availability within the next month. With Android 7.0 finally out the door, Samsung should probably get to work on porting over the current version of Android: 7.1.1.

Share this story

Ron Amadeo
Ron is the Reviews Editor at Ars Technica, where he specializes in Android OS and Google products. He is always on the hunt for a new gadget and loves to rip things apart to see how they work. Emailron@arstechnica.com//Twitter@RonAmadeo